Major Blizzard Bears Down on Northeast, 4,000 Flights Cancelled

As snow began to fall in the Northeast, people in the region, especially in areas where Hurricane Sandy struck hardest, began to stock up on supplies, motorists lined up to fill their tanks, and school children got a day off. Airlines, which started to cancel flights well in advance of the storm, continued to cancel flights overnight into and out of the region’s airports.

In New York, Amtrak suspended it northbound service out of Penn Station beginning at 1:03 p.m. The city can expect to see up to around fifteen inches of snow accumulation by the end of the storm.

In Boston, the worst of the storm is expected to hit between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. today, and around a foot and a half is expected to be on the ground by the end of the blizzard. After 1:15 p.m. today, Amtrak’s southbound service will be suspended out of the city’s South Station.

Up to two feet of snow is expected in Rhode Island, with about a foot set to fall in New Jersey. In Vermont, there had already been two inches of accumulation by this morning, and an additional seven to twelve inches is set to fall.

More than 2,900 flights have been cancelled today according to Flightaware, a flight-tracking service, and an additional 954 have been canceled for tomorrow. It is likely that flights and travel could be affected for several days after the storm, as aircraft and crews will have to be repositioned and many passengers will have been stranded.

The coronavirus is now affecting 104 countries and territories across the globe and many travelers are postponing or cancelling their travel plans as a result.
In some cases, a traveler is holding off because travel to his destination is simply not possible due to quarantine and containment rules; in others, it’s simply a desire not to go somewhere where one might end up with the coronavirus or trapped in a quarantined …

In early May, Warren Buffett divested all of his investment firm’s holdings in the four major U.S. airlines, warning that the “world has changed” for the aviation industry due to the coronavirus crisis. In mid May, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said he saw a bumpy road ahead for the airline industry and predicted that a major carrier would not survive 2020 as a result.
It appears Buffett and Calhoun were on …